Yellow traffic light

[Toquita]

I would like to point out that the Yellow traffic light could last much longer, being more realistic. The current time is not enough to consider stopping the truck or even stopping it, specially when we're near the light with a heavy load. This is causing us to get a redlight ticket.

Regards

[Tirpitz]

yes i agree

[Stormmaster]

Absolutely! I've been trying to find a good mod for this, but those I found implement other stuff as well, that make some other things less realistic or cause various problems on newer game versions. Still looking.

[Ryu]

Isn't the speed limit in towns (where the lights are) 50 kph? How are you not having enough time to react when the lights change?

[GeeTee]

Here's a few mods that just change the traffic light timings. Take your pick!

http://ets2.lt/en/semaphore-light-time/
http://ets2.lt/en/new-traffic-light-by-thalken/
http://ets2.lt/en/new-traffic-lights-mod-1-21x/

These also affect traffic volumes slightly:

http://ets2.lt/en/real-semaphore-light-and-moderate-traffic-v-1-0/
http://ets2.lt/en/rms-real-semaphorelight-and-traffic-v-2-0/

[Toquita]

Originally posted by Ryu:

Isn't the speed limit in towns (where the lights are) 50 kph? How are you not having enough time to react when the lights change?

Because if you're 20 m from the light when it's green, and it changes to yellow, it will change to red in 1 second? Try to stop a real truck at 50 Km/h like that, you'd damage it's structure.

ETS2 is supposed to be a Simulator, and these yellow traffic lights are just ridiculous.

[Stormmaster]

Originally posted by GeeTee:

Here's a few mods that just change the traffic light timings. Take your pick!

http://ets2.lt/en/semaphore-light-time/
http://ets2.lt/en/new-traffic-light-by-thalken/
http://ets2.lt/en/new-traffic-lights-mod-1-21x/

These also affect traffic volumes slightly:

http://ets2.lt/en/real-semaphore-light-and-moderate-traffic-v-1-0/
http://ets2.lt/en/rms-real-semaphorelight-and-traffic-v-2-0/

Thank you for recommendations. I tried all these before, and sadly they have rather serious disadvantages.
First has very long red lights, so a lot of time all directions stand and wait without anyone moving. Yellow light is not long enough either.
Second removes yellow light in red-to-green change completely while the vanilla game has different patterns for different countries (like in real some has yellow with red together, some don't).
Traffic volume increase cause transport collapse in Scandinavia.

Well, I suppose not having yellow/amber light is more realistic than having lights change every few seconds. I will give the second and third mod another try!

Originally posted by Ryu:

Isn't the speed limit in towns (where the lights are) 50 kph? How are you not having enough time to react when the lights change?

If you are playing with realistic braking intensity, it is impossible to stop in time when amber turns on, but also impossible to accelerate enough to pass on amber. The only way to avoid commiting a traffic offense is to stop at green and only pass on green when it turned on while you had been approaching. So in vanilla game with realistic settings red is more like green when you approach and vice versa (because by the time you get close red will turn green while green would turn red).

[Futuristic Hexagon]

Agreed. I'm not sure about the Traffic Engineering Standards for Europe, but I know here, the lights are realistically set to have Yellow up for at least 4 seconds (then if it's a monitored intersection through a red light cam, another 0.4 seconds grace period, though sometimes some juridstictions illegally set them to lower values to fatten their wallets...)

[Toquita]

Originally posted by Stormmaster:

If you are playing with realistic braking intensity, it is impossible to stop in time when amber turns on, but also impossible to accelerate enough to pass on amber. The only way to avoid commiting a traffic offense is to stop at green and only pass on green when it turned on while you had been approaching. So in vanilla game with realistic settings red is more like green when you approach and vice versa (because by the time you get close red will turn green while green would turn red).

Actually, in the new game builds you can pass on red after a few seconds without getting a ticket :D Don't wait too long tought.

[Ryu]

Originally posted by Stormmaster:

If you are playing with realistic braking intensity, it is impossible to stop in time when amber turns on, but also impossible to accelerate enough to pass on amber. The only way to avoid commiting a traffic offense is to stop at green and only pass on green when it turned on while you had been approaching. So in vanilla game with realistic settings red is more like green when you approach and vice versa (because by the time you get close red will turn green while green would turn red).

Your comments just brought to mind a term: Stale Green Light.

I've not had a problem with being able to stop when the lights change. If I'm approaching a lighted intersection and it's been on green the whole time I'm approaching (getting stale), then it's safe to assume it's about to change to red and I slow down. That way I don't get nicked rolling across the line as the light changes. Just like in real life...

[GeeTee]

Originally posted by Stormmaster:

Thank you for recommendations. I tried all these before, and sadly.. etc, etc

Hmm, ok fair call. How about this - I've extracted just the traffic lights portion out of my personal favourite mod in this genre, B73FLY's Enhanced Driving Experience[forum.scssoft.com].

B73FLY's mod is great IMO, but it does do more than just alter traffic light timings, which is outside the scope here.

So here's just the traffic lights timing edit from B73FLY's mod. The lights still retain the proper red / red+amber / green / amber cycle, but all intervals are extended for better realism. Also, the "sleep" interval where the lights flash amber overnight is extended.

From B73FLY's description:

Originally posted by B73FLY:

Traffic signals have longer and realistic timings, but not to a point where you have to wait for more than 2-3 minutes to cross a major intersection...unless you're in the left lane full of cars trying to turn left.

• Green light interval is 20 seconds (was 15s - GeeTee).
• Amber (yellow) light interval is 3 seconds (was 2s).
• 4-second delay interval between signals.
• Every signal is disabled from 23:00 to 05:00.

Try it out if you like, and maybe we can make some tweaks from here. It's a very simple mod.

Download:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/88806348/ets2_improved_traffic_signal_timing.scs

[Stormmaster]

Originally posted by Stormmaster:

I will give the second and third mod another try!

These two mess cycles up resulting into green for all directions quite soon.

Originally posted by GeeTee:

Try it out if you like, and maybe we can make some tweaks from here. It's a very simple mod.

Download: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/88806348/ets2_improved_traffic_signal_timing.scs

This one is very good! I've only tried it for a few minutes watching the cycles, and it looks like everything works fine. Yellow light is still a bit shorter than in real, I think, but it's a huge improvement over vanilla already. And I am not sure if it would be easy to extend it without breaking the cycles.

Thanks a lot!

[GeeTee]

No problem :)

I actually contacted the original author about doing this, so hopefully he/she might drop by the thread and offer some tips.

[SmurfK]

Originally posted by Linux Junior s2 Camila:

Originally posted by Ryu:

Isn't the speed limit in towns (where the lights are) 50 kph? How are you not having enough time to react when the lights change?

Because if you're 20 m from the light when it's green, and it changes to yellow, it will change to red in 1 second? Try to stop a real truck at 50 Km/h like that, you'd damage it's structure.

ETS2 is supposed to be a Simulator, and these yellow traffic lights are just ridiculous.

Then don't stop, if you're 20m from the intersection. This actually applies in real life too, you are allowed to pass on yellow light if you can't safely stop.

[Stormmaster]

Originally posted by SmurfK:

Then don't stop, if you're 20m from the intersection. This actually applies in real life too, you are allowed to pass on yellow light if you can't safely stop.

But yellow light is too short in vanilla game. To cover 20 m and pass on yellow in such short time you have to go too fast, which you obviously don't. So you are too far/slow to pass on yellow, but at the same time too close/ fast to stop on red.

Just try to set braking intensity in gameplay options to minimum (using pedals, wouldn't work right with keyboard, because since some update keyboard supports gradual braking and doesn't apply full braking force immediately) and see how much time is needed to stop from 30-40 km/h with load. Default braking intensity (slider in the middle) stops you in no time and is not realistic even for cars. With realistic settings you have to be close to semaphore when it changes to green in order to pass, otherwise just start stopping and wait for red to come to full stop at the line.

The mod GeeTee mentioned solves this problem very well. Now it's a real pleasure to drive. You can either stop in time or pass on yellow now. And green/red light is also longer (more like in real), so it's very good. It's one of the best mods for this game, maybe the best.